Bahá’u’lláh

Bahá’í International Community

Bahá’u’lláh’s mission began in a subterranean dungeon in Teheran in August
1852. Born into a noble family that could trace its ancestry back to the great
dynasties of Persia’s imperial past, He declined the ministerial career open
to Him in government, and chose instead to devote His energies to a range of
philanthropies which had, by the early 1840s, earned Him widespread renown as
“Father of the Poor.” This privileged existence swiftly eroded after 1844, when
Bahá’u’lláh became one of the leading advocates of a movement that was to change
the course of His country’s history.

The early nineteenth century was a period of messianic expectations in many
lands. Deeply disturbed by the implications of scientific inquiry and industrialization,
earnest believers from many religious backgrounds turned to the
scriptures of their faiths for an understanding of the accelerating processes
of change. In Europe and America groups like the Templers and the Millerites
believed they had found in the Christian scriptures evidence supporting their
conviction that history had ended and the return of Jesus Christ was at hand.
A markedly similar ferment developed in the Middle East around the belief that
the fulfillment of various prophecies in the Qur’án and Islamic Traditions was
imminent.

By far the most dramatic of these millennialist movements had been the one
in Persia, which had focused on the person and teachings of a young merchant
from the city of Shiraz, known to history as the Báb.
1
For nine years, from
1844 to 1853, Persians of all classes had been caught up in a storm of hope and
excitement aroused by the Báb’s announcement that the Day of God was at hand
and that He was himself the One promised in Islamic scripture. Humanity stood,
He said, on the threshold of an era that would witness the restructuring of all
aspects of life. New fields of learning, as yet inconceivable, would permit
even the children of the new age to surpass the most erudite of nineteenth-century
scholars. The human race was called by God to embrace these changes
3
through undertaking a transformation of its moral and spiritual life. His own
mission was to prepare humanity for the event that lay at the heart of these
developments, the coming of that universal Messenger of God, “He Whom God
will make manifest,” awaited by the followers of all religions.
2

The claim had evoked violent hostility from the Muslim clergy, who taught
that the process of Divine Revelation had ended with Muḥammad; and that any
assertion to the contrary represented apostasy, punishable by death. Their
denunciation of the Báb had soon enlisted the support of the Persian authorities.
Thousands of followers of the new faith had perished in a horrific series
of massacres throughout the country, and the Báb had been publicly executed on
July 9, 1850.
3
In an age of growing Western involvement in the Orient, these
events had aroused interest and compassion in influential European circles.
The nobility of the Báb’s life and teachings, the heroism of His followers, and
the hope for fundamental reform that they had kindled in a darkened land had
exerted a powerful attraction for personalities ranging from Ernest Renan and
Leo Tolstoy to Sarah Bernhardt and the Comte de Gobineau.
4

Because of His prominence in the defense of the Báb’s cause, Bahá’u’lláh
was arrested and brought, in chains and on foot, to Teheran. Protected in some
measure by an impressive personal reputation and the social position of His
family, as well as by protests which the Bábí pogroms had evoked from Western
embassies, He was not sentenced to death, as influential figures at the royal
court were urging. Instead, He was cast into the notorious Síyáh-Chál, the
“Black Pit”, a deep, vermin-infested dungeon which had been created in one of
the city’s abandoned reservoirs. No charges were laid but He and some thirty
companions were, without appeal, kept immured in the darkness and filth of this
pit, surrounded by hardened criminals, many of them under sentence of death.
Around Bahá’u’lláh’s neck was clamped a heavy chain, so notorious in penal
circles as to have been given its own name. When He did not quickly perish, as
had been expected, an attempt was made to poison Him. The marks of the chain
were to remain on His body for the rest of His life.

Central to Bahá’u’lláh’s writings is an exposition of the great themes
which have preoccupied religious thinkers throughout the ages: God, the role
of Revelation in history, the relationship of the world’s religious systems
to one another, the meaning of faith, and the basis of moral authority in the
organization of human society. Passages in these texts speak intimately of
His own spiritual experience, of His response to the Divine summons, and of
the dialogue with the “Spirit of God” which lay at the heart of His mission.
Religious history has never before offered the inquirer the opportunity for
so candid an encounter with the phenomenon of Divine Revelation.

Toward the end of His life, Bahá’u’lláh’s writings on His early experiences
included a brief description of the conditions in the Síyáh-Chál.

We were consigned for four months to a place foul beyond comparison….
The dungeon was wrapped in thick darkness, and Our fellow-prisoners
numbered nearly a hundred and fifty souls: thieves, assassins and
highwaymen. Though crowded, it had no other outlet than the passage by
which We entered. No pen can depict that place, nor any tongue describe
its loathsome smell. Most of these men had neither clothes nor bedding
to lie on. God alone knoweth what befell Us in that most foul-smelling
and gloomy place!
54

Each day the guards would descend the three steep flights of stairs of
the pit, seize one or more of the prisoners, and drag them out to be executed.
In the streets of Teheran, Western observers were appalled by scenes of Bábí
victims blown from cannon mouths, hacked to death by axes and swords, and led
to their deaths with burning candles inserted into open wounds in their bodies.
6
It was in these circumstances, and faced with the prospect of His own imminent
death, that Bahá’u’lláh received the first intimation of His mission:

One night, in a dream, these exalted words were heard on every
side: “Verily, We shall render Thee victorious by Thyself and by Thy
Pen. Grieve Thou not for that which hath befallen Thee, neither be Thou
afraid, for Thou art in safety. Erelong will God raise up the treasures
of the earth—men who will aid Thee through Thyself and through Thy
name, wherewith God hath revived the hearts of such as have recognized
Him.”
7

The experience of Divine Revelation, touched on only at secondhand in surviving
accounts of the lives of the Buddha, Moses, Jesus Christ, and Muḥammad,
is described graphically in Bahá’u’lláh’s own words:

During the days I lay in the prison of Ṭihrán, though the galling
weight of the chains and the stench-filled air allowed Me but little
sleep, still in those infrequent moments of slumber I felt as if something
flowed from the crown of My head over My breast, even as a mighty torrent
that precipitateth itself upon the earth from the summit of a lofty
mountain. Every limb of My body would, as a result, be set afire. At
such moments My tongue recited what no man could bear to hear.
8

1.

The Báb (“Gate” or “Door”) was born Siyyid ‘Alí-Muḥammad in Shiraz, October 20, 1819.
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2.

Passages in the Báb’s writings which refer to the advent of “Him Whom God will make manifest” include cryptic references to “the year Nine” and “the year Nineteen” (i.e. roughly 1852 and 1863, calculating in lunar years from the year of the Báb’s inauguration of His mission, 1844). On several occasions the Báb also indicated to certain of His followers that they would themselves come to recognize and serve “Him Whom God will make manifest.”
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3.

The proclamation of the Báb’s message had been carried out in mosques and public places by enthusiastic bands of followers, many of them young seminarians. The Muslim clergy had replied by inciting mob violence. Unfortunately, these events coincided with a political crisis created by the death of Muḥammad Sháh and a struggle over the succession. It was the leaders of the successful political faction, behind the boy-king Náṣiri’d-Dín Sháh, who then turned the royal army against the Bábí enthusiasts. The latter, raised in a Muslim frame of reference, and believing that they had a moral right to self-defense, barricaded themselves in makeshift shelters and withstood long, bloody sieges. When they had eventually been overcome and slaughtered, and the Báb had been executed, two deranged Bábí youth stopped the Shah in a public road and fired birdshot at him, in an ill-conceived attempt at assassination. It was this incident which provided the excuse for the worst of the massacres of Bábís which evoked protests from Western embassies. For an account of the period see W. Hatcher and D. Martin, The Bahá’í Faith: The Emerging Global Religion (San Francisco: Harper and Row, 1985), pp. 6–32.
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4.

For an account of these events see God Passes By, chapters I-V. Western interest in the Bábí movement was aroused, particularly, by the publication in 1865 of Joseph Arthur Comte de Gobineau’s Les religions et les philosophies dans l’Asie centrale (Paris: Didier, 1865).
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A number of Western diplomatic and military observers have left harrowing accounts of what they witnessed. Several formal protests were registered with the Persian authorities. See Moojan Momen, The Bábí and Bahá’í Religions, 1844–1944 (Oxford: George Ronald, 1981).
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